If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
--Obi Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
The Harry Potter series culminates in a story about the most powerful of magical items: the Elder Wand. The Lord of the Rings centers around an immensely powerful ring. Magical swords, potions, crystals, gems, mirrors are all things to quest for, or covet, or fight entire-world-on-the-brink battles over.
The Cybils nominees in the Middle Grade Sci-Fi Fantasy category sometimes draw on these old tropes, but have also introduced a few surprising and unique Items of Power. Two otherwise unrelated novels agree that dandelions have immense magically power. Didn't see that coming, but I can't argue with it either.
But there is a general consensus among the nominees that the most powerful of magical items are books. Books as portals, books as secret codes, books simply emanating power, books offering either narrative or knowledge. This idea isn't new, but its omnipresence does seem a little, I dunno, prophetic? I struggle over what this elevation of the printed word means. Is it sign that books are growing in importance? Or that they are becoming rarer, less read, less comprehensible and therefore more dangerous. Perhaps it's a "we-can-play-that-game-too" reaction to Biblical literalists. Or perhaps it's a kind of preemptive nostalgia for a form everyone assures us is breathing its last.
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Really interesting thoughts! I suspect that you're right that there's a correlation between the book's rise as an object of veneration and mystery, and its decline as a commonly used item.
ReplyDeleteVery thought-provoking...you made a good point with the "preemptive nostalgia" idea--I think there's also a thread of not-so-hidden wistfulness on the part of many writers for the books they held dear as children, books that may have (if indirectly) led them in turn to become writers. That is, maybe writers are more likely to see books as metaphorically magical, to credit them with the escape and enjoyment that they have as readers, and therefore the idea continues to end up in a lot of books. Self-perpetuating...
ReplyDeleteOoh, the Dandelion of Power.
ReplyDeleteI apparently have several of those in the yard.
I love the idea of books as powerful, but I don't so much like the idea of them as ...mystical. Information here, free, everyone! No preemptive nostalgia needed...
Very interesting! In a multi-author for-fun-FB-story I wrote recently with my friends, there was a "magical object" introduced into the story and I decided it needed to be a . . . book!
ReplyDeleteIt must be universal.
Love this point about books. And LOL at the sudden surge of magical dandelions. It's wonderful what the literary zeitgeist comes up with, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteFrom a freshness standpoint, I'll admit I like the dandelions better than the books... but then, I've always smiled conspiratorially when I've come across writers including not-so-subtle expressions of adulation for books in their books. We serious readers are a cult, and we're always recruiting, trying to convince kids that books are far more amazing than sliced bread or even the cell phone.
ReplyDelete--Kate (Book Aunt)
I think a. fortis is exactly right. Writers use books as magical objects because, for them, they *were*. It's also an idea as old as writing: "I am the WORD" and all that.
ReplyDeleteBut I wonder whether it really is *more* common now? It would take a lot of effort that I don't feel like making to do a real study of this, but my sense is that book-as-magical-object is pretty consistently common throughout fantasy lit. I think of Inkheart (2003), The Diamond Age (1995), The Neverending Story (1979)... the examples could go on forever.
Thanks for all of the comments.
ReplyDeleteCertainly, Sam M., magical books are as old as books themselves, and it may just be no more than my perception that they are currently more common. Still, it's a strong perception.
(Minor point of contention: Inkheart does not have magical books, but magic happens when books are read aloud by certain gifted people.)
I'm pretty confident magical dandelions have become more common, though I haven't done an extensive study.
tanita - I agree with you about books as mystical, or knowledge as mystical. Especially when the knowledge/book is forbidden. The "there-are-some-things-humans-just-weren't-meant-to-know" theme is unsettling in what it implies about superstition versus science and simple human curiosity.